From thirty yards in to the cup is the decisive area of any golf hole. It is here, most of the time, that the score on the hole is determined. In this area, at point-blank range so to speak, the hole is finished off smartly or it is ruined. Often a bad start from the tee or a poor second shot is atoned for by a brilliant approach and/or a fine putt. More often, unfor­tunately, the advantages of a good start and adequate play through the fairway go up in smoke because of the approach­ing or putting, or both. The only time the golf short game, in one or another of its phases, is not important is when we hit a long shot to within inches of the pin. How often does this  happen?

The golf short game is a forte of the touring pros. Realizing its value, they work on it continually, especially their put­ting. They use the golf short game primarily for the birdies they need if they are to win or stay in contention, and, secondly to make up with a par for any errant shot off the tee or through the fairway. The pros need the golf short game to turn 72's into 66's and 67's, for they will hit from 12 to 17 greens in par figures in the course of a round.

How much more valuable, then, could a good golf short game be to the average golfer who goes around in from 95 to 105 and hits only two or three greens in par? Think of the shots he could save with a game around the greens that was not brilliant but just reasonably reliable. Imagine how his scores would drop if he could get the ball in the hole in three shots instead of four from twenty or thirty yards, if he frequently took two from the edge instead of three, if he got out of green-side traps in one instead of two or three, and if he holed the two- and three-foot putts he now often misses?

Well, a reliable golf short game can be developed, though like any other phase of golf it takes work. This, though, calls for technique of a different kind and work of a different kind. It calls for the development of touch, rhythm, and judgment, as distinguished from comparatively big and violent body and arm action to gain club speed and power.

Aggravating as the golf short game can be when it lets us down, it has two good points. Not much room is required to prac­tice it and no great strength is necessary to become proficient in it. Any high-handicap player can develop a golf short game as good as the club champion's with work, though neither could ever get his distance off the tee.

As we see it, the golf short game falls, into four categories: the short pitch from thirty yards down, the green-side trap shot, the chip from the fringe, and the putt.

For the average player the primary object of the approach and the trap shot are to get the ball on the green. Just that alone. For the better player the object is to get the ball close enough to the cup to get down with one putt. Yet the club to be used and the basic manner of playing the shot are the same for both. The difference in objectives is possible because the good player has better control through his su­perior execution and confidence.

(The Short Pitch)

The average player should play the short pitch with a lofted club, an 8 or 9 iron, he should aim always for the opening (assuming there is one), and he should in nearly all cases play it so that the ball lands on the putting surface, rather than rolls onto it.

With the 8 or 9 iron the shot is a lofted pitch that will run a little distance after it hits. The loft of the club will give it some backspin, if it is struck only well enough to get it into the air. The spin, plus the fact that it is lofted and so will descend at a rather sharp angle, will prevent it from running very far.

If the opening is at the left, let us say, and the pin is on the right behind a trap, the average player should still hit for the opening. That is the safe way. The good player will go for the pin and the chance to get down in one putt.

We advise using the 8 or 9 iron on the shot rather than the wedge because the average player is more likely to be familiar with the 8 or 9. The wedge is not the easiest club in the bag to handle, and this is an important shot that should be made with the club in which the player has the most confidence and which he uses oftenest and best.

The shot should be made to hit the putting surface, rather than the approaches to it, because the ball's action on the putting surface is more dependable. The approach or apron might be rough and the ball could take a kick, right or left. It could be soft or heavy and the ball could stick there. Or it could be harder than the green and the ball could run much farther than anticipated. The only time it is ad­visable to deliberately play to hit short is when the pin is set close to the front edge of a small green.

For the short pitch the stance should be somewhat open and narrower. the heels only a few inches apart. The knees  should be bent more than usual with the buttocks in the beginning of a sitting-down position. If a kitchen stool, for instance, were moved in behind the player, he would be just about in position to sit on it. The whole idea of this stance is that we are making a much shorter shot than usual and one calling for more accuracy.

And here, the grip changes slightly too. The right hand remains the same but the left should be turned to the left a little more, so that only one knuckle is visible instead of the customary two, and the left thumb is down the top of the shaft instead of a little across it. This is for accuracy, a brace against turning the hands to the left and pulling the shot. If we slice it a little, it won't matter and besides the ball will come down with more spin on it. But if we pull it, the ball will run and may get us far from the pin. The grip, of course, should be shorter: the hands halfway or more down the gripping area.

Now for the stroke itself. Although a sense of rhythm is im­portant in all shots, it becomes increasingly so the shorter the shot gets. We are down now to a point thirty yards or less from the green, and this shot is almost all rhythm, as distinguished from the wind-up-and-hit shot.

Figs. 42A, 42B. The wrong way to hit the short pitch. Driving the club head at the ball and stopping the hands "stings" it, making it take off lower and run after it hits.

By rhythm in this context we mean a deliberate, even, backward-forward swing­ing of the hands, more like the" movement of the pendulum of a clock.

The fatal flaw in the short-game action of the average player is the striking of a quick, hard blow, with, the hands stopping and the club head stopping almost as it hits the ball, often digging into the ground. With this kind of stroke, contact with the ball must be extremely accurate and the timing perfect. There is no margin for error. Then, too, we do not want to "sting" the ball, because it leaves the club head fast, and, if struck squarely, is liable to run past the hole. If it is struck the least bit heavy, it pops up and lands short, probably in the trap or the water it was supposed to go over.

Figs. 43A, 43B. The right way to hit the short pitch of 40 yards or less. The hands go through and the ball rises in a lazy, floating action and drops softly.

The technique for this short pitch is the same, funda­mentally, as for the full shot, except that it is in a modified form. Again we have the backward wrist break; with this short shot it takes the club straight back from the ball. Again the face stays square on the backswing, and again the wrists break early. But the break is not as sharp nor as pronounced as in the big swing. Since the swing is slower the break is slower, and since the swing is much shorter the break never is complete. It is, in short, the same as for the big swing but in miniature—slowed and reduced.

So, in making the stroke, break the wrists as the hands are swung away from the ball, but break them easily and smoothly, with no attempt to break them all the way. Then swing the hands forward and past the ball. They should go through with a slight flex still in the wrists so that the hands go through the ball slightly ahead of the club head.

Since you are gripping the club down the shaft for this short shot, you will notice that the end of the club will be almost against the left forearm. It should still be there at the end of the stroke. It will be if the hands go through first. If you flick the club and the head goes through first, the end of the club will move away from the forearm. This is an infallible check point..

The club head will take care of itself if we will only let it. The great difficulty with this shot, as well as with the full shots, as we have already said many times, is that we insist on trying to make the club head do something. All that is necessary is to make our hands do something.

Since this is largely an arm and hand shot, there is little body movement. Don't try to stop what there is, though, especially whatever there may be in the shoulders.

In this shot, as in the chip from the fringe and the putt, the thought should always be that the distance is governed by the length of the backswing, never by the amount of force put into the forward swing. And we must always go through this shot with our hands, so that roughly the length of the follow-through and the length of the backswing are the same, with the left wrist still straight at the finish. Never let it collapse.

If you will watch the pros with this in mind, you will see that this is the way they play the shot. We cannot stress too strongly that it should be played this way and no other. It is, again, not the natural way to play it. The natural way is to take the club back a short distance and drive it into the ball, trying to govern the distance of the shot entirely by the force applied. This mistaken tactic, which "stings" the ball, has accounted for more bad short pitches than any other one thing. In the correct shot the ball is not stung. Rather, we should have a mental image of it floating slowly through the air.

The whole swing should be made deliberately, never hurried; but in being deliberate guard against looseness. The two, unfortunately, seem to go together.

A word of warning may be necessary here. The rhythmic shot does not in any sense mean a scooping effort. The ball should be struck just slightly before the bottom of the arc is reached and no effort whatever should be made to lift it. The loft of the club will get the ball up, as it always does if you give it a chance.

Development of the rhythmic type of swing will take some time, especially if you are a confirmed hitter, as most players are. But with practice the feel of it will come. The time you spend on it will be well repaid.

The Chip

The chip shot, by which we mean the run-up played from inches to six feet off the putting surface, can be the greatest stroke-saver in golf. It is here that the good player takes up the slack of an approach that is just a little short, or one that misses to either side by a little, or one which rolls barely over the green. Here is the place the pro or the good amateur shows his class and draws ahead of his high-handicap or only moderately good playing companions.

Take, for instance, a hole measuring 420 yards. This is usually a tough par 4. The 12-handicap player isn't long enough to reach the green in two but he can get there in three, and two putts give him a 5. The pro can usually get home in two easily. But sometimes he will miss the green by a few feet. He then chips close to the hole and drops his putt for a 4. If this goes on for ten holes during a round, the pro could be as much as ten shots ahead even though the 12-handicapper doesn't miss a shot. What it comes down to is that the good players are adept at rolling three shots into two; the poor ones aren't.

How often have you heard a player bemoan his golf short game? "I had an 84, but five times I took three to get down from the edge." That's the story of many a swollen score by pretty good golfers—three from the edge. Don't think the pros don't lose their touch around the greens too, at times. Then they come in grumbling that their 72 should have been a 69. But by and large the good player's superiority is just as manifest around the greens at it is on the tees.

The mental approach to the chip shot should be to regard it as a short pitch. That's what it is. We employ the same grip, the same general stance, and the same swinging action. The only differences are (1) that the club is gripped shorter, (2) that since we are riot going to move the ball as far, the swing is shorter, and (3) that generally a less lofted club should be used.

The grip is taken farther down the shaft for the chip because it brings the hands closer to the club head and thereby gives us better control. Since this is a precision shot, we want all the control we can get.

Although the swing is shorter, the swinging action is exactly the same. With the one-knuckle grip and the thumb down the top of the shaft, the club is taken back in a straight line. The wrists flex slightly. Then the hands go through with the idea of striking the ball with the wrists still flexed.

Again it is exactly the same rhythmic action. As in the short pitch, the distance is determined by the length of the backswing, not by the force of the forward blow. The face is kept square after the ball is hit; the length of the follow-through should be about the same as the length of the backswing. Also, the left arm and the club should form a straight line at the finish, with the end of the shaft in the same position relative to the left forearm as it was at the address.

Figs. 44A, 44B, 44C. Technique for the chip shot. With the club held well down on the grip, the end of the shaft extends up behind the left wrist, as the broken lines show. It should still be there at the end of the stroke, as in B. When it is not, as in C, the stroke has been wrong.

If the end of the shaft moves away from the wrist, it means we have nicked the club head slightly and hit with it instead of swinging our hands through the ball.

The main problem with chip shots, as with putting, is distance, not direction. Most reasonably decent golfers will chip the ball on a good line toward the cup, and we have attempted to reinforce that accuracy by advising that the club be taken straight back from the ball, neither inside nor outside. If your chips are going consistently to the right, it is pretty good evidence that you are taking the club back inside, and if they are going to the left, you are taking the club back outside.

But distance is the problem. There are two ways of gauging distance. One is by picking out a spot on the green on which you want your ball to land, then hitting the ball so it will land there and roll on to die at the cup. This has the ad­vantage of being definite but it implies—nay, demands—an exact knowledge of how far the ball will roll when struck any of varying distances with any club from a wedge to a 4 or 5 iron. This is knowledge, it seems to us, that we might spend a lifetime learning, while we would still make mistakes because of the differences in the lie of the ball and the speed of the green.

The other and sounder method of tackling the distance problem is by instinct. If this seems too haphazard to be dignified by calling it a method, don't be too quick to con­demn it.

Archery and golf are a long way apart, it is true, but there is at least one helpful similarity—the problem of overshoot­ing or undershooting. In archery it is called elevation: going too high or too low. Archers attack this in two ways. Some use what is known as a "point of aim." They sight over the tip of the arrow to an object on the ground. Then they shoot and move this object nearer the target or farther from it until they have the exact distance which will, by sighting it, give them the right range.

The other attack is by instinct. By experience, by judg­ment of distance, by feel—by instinct—they place the arrow accurately without using an artificial point of aim. Naturally, a beginner doesn't have this instinct, but he develops it. And it becomes, with practice, very sharp. It is, in fact, the only way a field archer or a hunter, ever hits anything; if he is hunting bear, for instance, he can't approach the beast and put down a marker to use as a point of aim before he shoots.

A similar sharpness of instinct is developed by golfers. If you were to stand on the fringe of a green and, instead of chipping the ball, you were to pick it up in your hand and roll it toward the cup, you would do pretty well most of the time. Your instinct would dictate how fast you should roll it to make it reach the cup.

"But," you say, "I don't roll it with my hand. I have to strike it with a club."

Our answer is, "Ah, but that is exactly why we have told you to swing through the ball while your wrists are still flexed—so your hands will go through first. It is the speed of your hands which determines how far the ball will go. And it is much easier to control and regulate the speed of your hands than it is the speed of the club head. It is easier to think and feel how fast your hands are going, because they are a responsive part of you, than it is to think of how fast the head of the club is going."

So, let your instinct govern the speed of your hands, and think only of swinging with your hands, not of how fast you should make the club head go. Just as with the big shots, it is our misplaced preoccupation with the club head that gets us into trouble. Don't try to estimate how hard the club head should strike the ball. Instead, let your hands tell you how fast they should be moved. When you throw a ball to some­one, you do not stop and try to calculate how much effort you should put into the throw to make the ball reach him. You know instinctively; your arm "tells" you. It is exactly the same with the pitch shot and the chip.

What club for the chip? The question has stirred up many a discussion. Some say that the straight-faced irons, even up to the Nos. 3 and 4 should be used. Their argument is that the straighter the face, the less backspin it imparts to the ball, and therefore the distance of the roll is easier to judge. They also say that with the lofted clubs you never can tell exactly how much backspin you will get from one chip to the next, depending on the lie of the ball and the consistency of the green. This group generally visualizes the chip as just a long putt. This is all perfectly logical.

Another group prefers the No. 8 and No. 9, even the wedge. They point out that since these clubs are shorter, with more upright lies, they bring the player (and his hands) nearer the ball, that most players are more familiar with them and that their loft can be easily changed, within limits, by closing or opening the face.

Some claim that the club used should vary all the way from a No. 4 to a No. 9, depending on how long the chip shot is. Others would rather rely on one club for all shots, regardless of the distance.

All of which shows, if nothing else, that there is a dif­ference of opinion about the matter. It is our belief that the Nos. 5, 6, and 7 are the best for chipping in the long run. They have enough loft to raise the ball without trouble, yet not enough to impart the backspin that would seriously affect the running action. There is no reason to doubt tests which have shown that the greatest backspin is applied with a 5 iron. But this occurs when the ball is struck hard, for a full shot. The light impact for the chip imparts little spin.

We would use the 5, 6, and 7 as dictated by the length of the shot being played, and we recommend them as the chipping clubs for the beginner or for the more experienced player who is having trouble with this shot. We believe that the law of averages favors getting more chips closer to the hole with these clubs than with any others. However, if a good player is deadly using a 3 iron for all shots, or using a wedge, we would let him alone. That's the right club for him.

Putting

We have just remarked on the wide difference of opinion concerning the clubs to be used for chipping. That difference is as nothing to those which come up in practically any dis­cussion of putting—from the grip through the stance, the stroke, and the type of weapon itself.

We shall not attempt to go into all these ideas; they could fill a book by themselves. Nor shall we dwell at any great length on the general importance of putting. No one has to be a mental giant to appreciate that one-half the strokes taken in a theoretical par round of 72 are putts—two to a green. Yet 36 putts a round is not considered good putting by any means. This is because no one ever hits eighteen greens in par figures, but instead relies on chipping and short pitch shots to get close enough to get down in one putt on many holes. Hence, the person who cannot con­sistently hole the short putts and who frequently takes three on a green is in dire trouble. He finds it all but impossible to reduce his score, even though his long game improves.

On the other hand, a good putter with an erratic long game can reduce his score appreciably by straightening out his drives and fairway shots, this with practice and instruc­tion. This fellow will also win a great many matches against players who are longer off the tee and more consistent through the fairway, because of the sheer emotional impact on his opponents of his good putting. There is nothing more shattering to a player's morale than to be on the green in two shots and take three putts, while his opponent is on in three and down in one.

Putting is such an involved part of golf that generaliza­tions are dangerous. For instance, it is easy to say that dis­tance, rather than direction, is the main problem in putting. This certainly is true on long putts. But what about the short putts? From one foot to six feet few of us are going to be bothered by distance. The closer we are to the hole the easier it is to control the distance.

Putting is also such a personalized part of the game that anyone is rash indeed when he becomes dogmatic about method. To any such remark as "You can't do it that way," someone will produce a dozen very fine putters who do it exactly that way. It cannot be said of any really good, con­sistent putter that his form is wrong. For him it is right. In the philosophical sense, putting form is strictly pragmatic.

Over the long years that a segment of the human race has been "putting little balls into little holes with instru­ments singularly ill adapted to the purpose," as an Oxford don once put it, there have been changes in styles and techniques. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth cen­turies, for instance, players in Scotland and England gripped the putter very short. This meant they had to bend over very low. Why this was done we don't know, unless it was to expose less of themselves to the stiff winds of the British Isles.

Through the first three decades of the twentieth century styles were highly individualistic, even among the top play­ers. Bob Jones, for example, stood up quite straight, with his feet practically touching, and gripped the putter at the end of the shaft. During the same period Walter Hagen putted from a decided crouch, with feet spread wide apart. Jim Barnes, a tall, thin man who won both the British and American Open championships, took a very short grip and bent over much more than Hagen, although he was several inches taller. Then there were Horton Smith, Paul Runyan, and Johnny Farrell. Although of decidedly different builds, and using different techniques, all were superb on the greens.

Because of these radical differences, it is often said that great putters are born, not made. There is some truth in this. There are, or surely appear to be, certain individuals with senses of touch, judgment, and control and a general aptitude for getting the ball into the hole which excel those of most mortals. And they do not have to be great or even good players to possess this faculty. Almost every club has one or two of them.

At the same time there is no gainsaying the fact that a poor or very ordinary putter can make himself into a reasonably good one by practice and an appreciation of fun­damental principles. It is a fact, for example, that the putting of the American touring pros has greatly improved over the years. Competition on the PGA circuit is so keen, and the standard of play is so high, that those who play the tour con­sistently simply have to be good putters or quit. Practically all of them are so good, in fact, that it is impossible now to single out any one of them and say, as we could of Smith or Runyan in their day, "He is the best."

Why are so many so good? Because, for one thing, they have given more thought to putting than to any other de­partment of the game. They have theorized more and tested their theories and experiments on such a large scale that out of the great laboratory of the circuit have come certain undeniable truths.

One of these is that putting never can be made a com­pletely "mechanical" action. We put this question to Horton Smith one time, and he, one of the greatest putters of all time, replied at some length:

"No, it never can be entirely mechanical, because we human beings have nerves and emotions. We never will have such complete control of our muscles that we will be able to set the putter in motion and let it make the stroke itself, automatically, so to speak.

"But I do believe that the best putting is a combination of the mechanical and of touch. The closer we can get to the mechanical stroke while still controlling it with our minds and muscles, the better we will be. I know that in my own case it was definitely a combination of the two, working as close as I could get them.

"There have been great putters, a few, who have worked entirely by touch. I've heard that Arnaud Massey, a French­man who won the British Open many years ago, was a putter like that. But I've also heard that nobody could possibly duplicate Massey's style."

Probably the nearest approach to the "pure touch" method in the modern era is that of Bobby Locke, the great South African. Locke's putting was as unconventional, by Ameri­can standards, as were all his other shots. But he had mar­velous control of them all and hence was a big winner both here and abroad. But no one ever would attempt to copy Locke's style, either on the green or off the tee. It was too individual.

The thought that Horton Smith expressed has become the keynote of American effort. The goal is to make the stroke as mechanical as possible and at the same time to develop touch and judgment to the highest degree. In pursuing this goal, bizarre, unconventional styles have practically disap­peared. Most of the pros today hold the putter at the end of the grip, bend over only enough to bring their eyes directly over the ball, bring the head of the putter straight back, and try to keep its face square to the direction line at all times. Most of them also favor a slightly braced stance, that is, with the weight more on the left leg than on the right. And they favor the reverse overlap grip. They aim to elimi­nate all movement of both the body and the head and confine movement only to the "working" parts—the arms and hands, some to the hands alone.

All this has brought, in a general sense, a uniformity in putting that did not exist thirty years ago. We no longer see putters with very flat lies (practically all are upright), and we see nothing to approach "Diegeling," the peculiar arms-akimbo position made famous by the late great Leo Diegel, or the one-foot-behind-the-other stance of Eustace Storey, a British amateur. Nor do we see the ample backswing and sweeping stroke of Jones.

Within this uniformity, though, there are differences. The most obvious of these is the way the ball is hit, with either a tap or a stroke, and another is in the use of the wrists, keeping them stiff through the ball or breaking them. Bob Rosburg, 1959 PGA champion, is the most pronounced tap­per, his club moving only a few inches back from and past the ball. Sam Snead is decidedly more of a stroker. Art Wall, Jr., was remarkably stiff wristed when he won the Masters in 1959 with five birdies on the last six holes. Few putters broke their wrists more than Bill Casper when he won the American Open the same year, with only 114 putts on the seventy-two greens, 30 under par.

Types of clubs vary much more than styles, although they are of two general types, the blade and the mallet. We are unable to make strong recommendations. Whichever type, regardless of where the shaft is set into the head, feels good to you is the putter for you. Putting is mental and personal to that extent. We do believe, however, that a medium to heavy putter is better than a light one. It is less subject to sensitive nerves and will do more of the work by itself. One further note: If you are putting badly with a mallet, try a blade; you may find it slightly easier to square up with the direction line.

As to the grip, the stance, and the stroke itself, we do have preferences.

Since the grip changes for the type of stroke used, and since we favor a stroking movement rather than the wristy tap, we will give the grip for the stroking movement.

We believe, first, in the reverse overlap, that is, with the thumb and four fingers of the right hand on the club and the forefinger of the left hand overlapping the last two fingers of the right. We like this because the putt is pre­dominantly a right-handed action. We want the right hand in control.

The right hand should be placed on the club so that the palm faces directly to the left and the club is held in the fingers. We are going to move this palm backward and for­ward and keep it facing directly at our objective. The right thumb lies directly on top of the shaft, pointing straight down.

The position of the left hand is different. It is placed not at the side of the club, not in direct opposition to the right hand, but under the shaft, facing upward at about a 45-degree angle. If you are not accustomed to it, this will feel like a strange position. You simply have to get used to it. The reason for it is that we want to keep the face of the club from opening on the backswing, and the left-hand po­sition under the shaft is the nearest thing there is to in­surance that it won't. The left thumb lies down the shaft. a little left of the top.

There are several points in the stance on which there has come to be general, though by no means unanimous, agreement. We should stand with our eyes directly over the ball, the shaft should be exactly perpendicular, the head and body should be completely stationary, the face of the putter should be square to the direction line, and we should strive always for a solid on-the-button contact with the ball.

There are good reasons for all these points in golf short game. When our eyes are directly over the ball the line to the hole, or that we want the ball to follow, is seen with less perspective than if the eyes are anywhere else. The shaft should be perpen­dicular because when it is, we are much more likely to strike the ball exactly at the bottom of the swing arc. Any movement of the head or the body is liable to move the hands and throw the ball off line. The head can move three or four inches on big shots but one inch can ruin a putt. If the face of the putter is not square to start with, we certainly will have a harder time bringing it square at contact. The flush, solid contact should seemingly be easy with a putter, yet how often have you hit a putt and gotten a dead, off-center feel­ing? Some putts hit off center will go into the hole, no question about that, but those which are hit flush are much more likely to drop. A putt hit off center is an indication that something has gone wrong with the stroke.

Opinions on other points of the stance differ, but we prefer a slight spread of the feet, so that more weight can be placed on the left leg, giving us a braced feeling and less likelihood of body movement.

We also want  a square stance—the points of the toes an equal distance from the direction line. This makes lining up the putt easier.

The ball itself should be played opposite the left he.el.j8I a shade inside it. We realize this is at variance with the practice of many good putters who play the ball opposite the left toe. We feel that with the heel position there is less chance of pulling the putt. If it is played farther back there would be a tendency to push it.

The stroked putt itself is almost a chip shot in miniature. The club is taken straight back from the ball with the "arms, the arms hinging at the shoulder joints, and the face kept square. At the end of the backstroke there is a slight, backward break in the wrists. The hands and arms are then moved straight to the left, and the head of the putter is taken through the ball with no break whatever in the left wrist. The right hand is in command at all times and on the forward stroke the palm of this hand should be moved straight at the objective.

We believe, along with many others, that the ballshould be struck exactly at the bottom of the swing arc. We see no point in hitting it on the downstroke or the upstroke. These merely complicate the putt, an operation most players find difficult enough at its simplest.

The rhythm of the stroke should always be the same, with the length of the putt determined by the length of the back-swing.

All of this constitutes the stiff-wristed stroke, the method most players will find easier to learn and to execute than any other.

The wristy tap is entirely different. In this, since all move­ment is confined to the hands and there is no hinging at the shoulders, the hands must be exactly opposed in the grip. The left cannot be under the shaft but must exactly face the right.

In the stroke itself the arms do not move. The hands simply bend backward and forward at the wrist joints. Because the arms don't move, the head of the putter is brought up higher on the backstroke and higher again after the ball is hit on the forward stroke.

Figs. 45A, 45B, 45C. Arm putting. The arms swing from the shoulders. The putter is taken through the ball with no break in the left wrist.

And here there is more of a feeling that the putter is pushed back by the left hand and brought forward with the right.

Pros on the circuit appear to change from time to time, many of them combining some elements of each style in golf short game. Cary Middlecoff, at his peak, was perhaps the best example of the compromise between the two. Middlecoff appeared to stroke the ball yet at the same time to give it a right-hand tap. Some pros also feel that the wristy tap may be better for the long putts but prefer the stroke for the shorter ones, on the theory that the wrists, being sensitive, are more liable to be affected by jumpy nerves than are the arms. It is largely a matter of which style works better for the in­dividual doing the putting.

One thing which you should do in putting is develop a definite pattern of movement, a sort of time-motion formula, in which the same motions are made each time, and the same amount of time is consumed before the putt is struck.

Julius Boros, a big and consistent money winner among the Ameri­can pros, exemplifies this to a marked degree. Boros sizes up the putt thoroughly before he takes his stance, but once he gets over the ball there is no hesitation. His first move­ment then is to place the head of the club in front of the ball, his second is to place it behind the ball, his third is to start the stroke. The pattern never varies, regardless of the difficulty or importance of the putt.

A friend once mused, "I wonder if Boros ever lies awake nights wondering how many more he would have holed if he'd taken a little more time."

A fellow pro answered with, "I'm sure he doesn't. He's found that this pattern works for him. He may occasionally miss a putt that he'd have dropped if he'd taken more time, but there are more that he makes that he would have missed if he'd hung over the ball, agonizing."

Figs. 46A, 46B, 46C. Wrist putting. The arms remain stationary, the hands breaking backward and forward at the wrists.

That is what we mean by a pattern, a time-motion formula. Your pattern is not likely to be the same as Boros', but develop one and then stick to it. In the long run you'll find it saves you strokes.

Another thing in golf short game, which should be borne in mind about putting: Don't clutter your thinking with ideas about ap­plying overspin, sidespin, or backspin to the ball. You can't do it. Alastair Cochran, an English physicist, recently dem­onstrated that any spin which happens to be applied disap­pears long before it reaches the hole. The idea that overspin can be put on a ball which will make it dive into the cup is the rankest fallacy.

All putts skid slightly before settling into a true roll. The harder the ball is struck, the more it skids. A ball struck with a slightly descending blow will skid more than one struck with a perfectly horizontal blow.

A putt that is partly topped will skid less than either, but who wants to go around trying to partly top all his putts? Nor does it make any difference whether you tap the ball or use a sweeping stroke, so far as the mechanical action of the ball is con­cerned.

No, your concern in putting should be only to meet the ball squarely, with the club face facing exactly in the direc­tion you want the ball to start moving.

The one indispensable ingredient in this department is confidence; not confidence that you will sink every putt regardless of its distance, but confidence that you will be able to handle, with the method you use, any putting situ­ation that may arise.

The Green-side Trap

All trap play, we suppose, should be classed as trouble and treated in the chapter devoted to trouble. Bunker shots cer­tainly cannot be identified as one of the pleasant interludes in a round of golf. Yet traps around the green are in the scoring area, hence they fall into the category of the golf short game. When we speak, for instance, of Boros, 1952 Amer­ican Open champion, as having a great golf short game we don't think only of his putting, his chipping, and his short pitches. We also think of his trap play around the greens. Exactly the same is true of Casper, the 1959 champion, and others whose golf short games are unusually good. Their recov­eries from sand are integral parts of their games in the scoring zone. Time after time they come out close enough to get down in one putt and avert a penalty they invited.

In golf short game, we don't have to tell you much about the traps themselves. They vary widely: some deep, some shallow, some with fine, fluffy sand, some with coarse, heavy sand. And you likewise know that the lies you can get in traps can run all the way from clean to embedded. One lie you don't get much today is one in the bottom of a heel print. Many courses now have rakes at each green and a caddy smoothes out the foot­prints, even if the player himself doesn't.

We will consider first the clean lie, with a .bank of no more than three or four feet to clear.

The first task is to get the ball out of the trap and on the green. Never mind, yet, about getting close to the cup. From anywhere on the green you have at least a chance, even if the ball is sixty feet away, of holing the putt. But if you leave the ball in the trap with your shot, you have practically no chance. Never forget that.

Let's consider the special club used for the last thirty years, approximately, for getting out of the sand—the sand wedge. This club has made the job much easier than in the days when a niblick, to which our No. 9 iron corresponds, was the tool.

The niblick, at least prior to 1930, was a comparatively thin-bladed club with a deep face. The tendency in hitting an explosion shot with it was to dig too deep and leave the ball still in the sand. Because of this the so-called half-blast was developed. In this the player took a very open stance, laid back the face, and tried to take just a thin layer of sand under the ball with an out-to-in swing. If this shot was mastered it had two good points. It lessened the likelihood of digging too deep, and it imparted a great deal of backspin to the ball. Such a shot was aimed a little to the left of the pin, because when the ball hit the green with the backspin applied from the outside, it would draw up and kick to the right. Such a shot was fine, if the execution was good; the trouble lay in mastering the execution. A little too much sand and the ball stayed in the trap. Not enough sand and the player was likely to decapitate anybody standing on the opposite side of the green.

Then came the sand wedge. This club differed from the niblick in being heavier and, more importantly, in being very thick about the sole, which was flanged. The flange had —and still has—the effect of a plane, which tends to keep the club head from digging too deeply into the sand. It rides through it more or less horizontally. The wedge is not foolproof by any means, as millions of golfers have found out; but it is a better club, a more reliable tool, than any­thing else produced and permitted by the United States Golf Association. Now let's see how this tool should be used.

The first thing to do, as you take your stance, is shuffle your feet down into the sand until they have a firm base. There are two good reasons for this. The first is to give you the firm base, so that during the action of the swing, as the weight shifts, one foot won't sink farther down than at the beginning of the swing. Such a drop, if it is only an inch, can spoil the shot by lowering the arc of the swing and causing you to take too much sand. The second reason for the foot-shuffling is to give you an idea of the texture of the sand and how much of it there actually is in the area of the ball. You may find there is very little, or that it is hard or deep or fluffy, as the case may be. Since the rules prevent you from touching the sand with your hand or the club, give your feet a chance to tell you.

The next thing to bear in mind about the wedge is that it is heavier than your other clubs and therefore is able to do more work by itself. In other words, it doesn't have to be swung so hard, for the shot of average length. Of far more importance than any application of power is the neces­sity for accurate contact with the sand. Once the club is started moving, if the hands are kept moving through the ball, just as in any other type of shot, the club will go through without any extra burst of speed or power. Rare is the average player, though, who doesn't give it that extra burst, because he fears the club will stick in the sand and the ball will stay in the trap.

This brings us directly to the second point, which is the  importance of hitting the sand where we aim to hit it. Since the whole idea of the explosion type of sand shot is to swing the club through the sand under the ball, with the ball thrown up by the sudden upward displacement of sand, the amount of sand thrown up is the determining factor. The amount thrown up is determined by the distance behind the ball that the club enters the sand and on how steep the downward path of the club is. The steeper the path, the deeper the club will go in spite of the flange on its sole, and the greater will be the amount of sand displaced. If there is too much, the ball won't be raised enough to get it out of the trap. If there is too little, the ball will come out too far and probably go right over the green into a trap on the other side.

The ideal point to strike the sand is two inches behind the rear face of the ball, with a swing more upright than the one taught for the other shots.
As you start to address your ball, then, the first thing to do is pick out a spot in the sand that you estimate is two inches behind it. This is just about the distance from the tip of your index finger to the second joint. There is always some good little target to aim at: a pebble, a black speck, a white speck, something. The idea is to have the sole of the club enter the sand at this point. You should always remem­ber that you will be much more accurate in hitting the spot if you swing easily and rhythmically and let the club do the work.

As for the shot itself, the stance should be moderately open, the feet rather close together, as for the short pitch, the grip the same as for the short pitch (one knuckle visible), and the ball played about opposite the left heel. The face of the club should be opened just a little (Fig. 47).

The swing itself should be made with the same early backward wrist break as for a full shot, but the swing should not be full. It should be about a three-quarter swing and slightly more upright than normal. Most of the weight should be kept on the left foot throughout. This is to pro­mote a more accurate contact with the sand and to avoid a possible shifting of stance (Fig. 48).

Fig. 47. The explosion shot. The stance, with the explosion idea super­imposed. Stance is slightly open, so is the club face. The idea is to drive the lofted wedge into the sand behind the ball, exploding sand and ball upward.

With a three-quarter swing the wrist break will be com­plete, for the hands will be more than hip high. From the top there is the same hip and shoulder action that there is for the full shot, except that it is less violent. In golf short game, the effort should be about what it is for a fifty-yard pitch shot. As in the other shots the hands should tend to go through the ball ahead of the club head, with determination but not with great speed. The hips should lead, with the upper part of the body staying back, just as in a full shot.
A difference you may notice at the finish is that the club will not come up far out of the sand. Its momentum has been spent going through it. For this reason the right hand does not climb over the left.

Fig. 48. Top of the swing for the explosion. Notice that the swing is more upright, shorter, and with less break in the wrists than for an ordinary pitch. Also, the face of the club is open.

None of this matters though, for by that time the ball is out of the trap and safely on the green—we hope.

This is the shot to be used from a clean or nearly clean lie, in dry, loose sand. The distance you want the ball to travel is determined by the, strength of the swing, not, as in the other shots, by the length of the backswing. In sand, keep the length of the swing the same for practically all shots, but vary the amount of effort depending on the distance to be covered.

If the sand is wet or packed hard, take less sand by hitting closer to the ball, keeping the length and strength of the swing the same.

For an embedded lie in golf short game, where three quarters or all of the ball is below the surrounding surface of the sand, a different technique is called for. For this we play the ball back farther, almost back to the right foot, open the stance less or not at all, close or even hood the face of the club, and hit down hard, close behind the ball (Fig. 49).

Fig. 49. The embedded lie can be handled. Notice that the ball is played back toward the right foot, that the hands are ahead of it, that the stroke will be more sharply descending, and that the club face is closed. All this imparts more of a forward, less of a lifting, motion to the ball

The idea here is to get the club down into the sand to raise the ball and at the same time to get it moving forward toward the target. Playing the ball farther back and closing the face of the club accomplishes both objectives: The club digs deeper and the lessened loft of the club face propels the ball forward.

For this shot we still prefer the sand wedge, although some players will use the pitching wedge for it and even the 9 —iron. The reason for selecting the other clubs is that the pitching wedge has less flange on the sole than the sand wedge and the 9 iron less than the pitching wedge. These clubs, therefore, will cut down into the sand more easily.

During the golf short game, occasionally you will find yourself in a trap with its almost perpendicular face directly in front of your ball. If you are to get out toward the hole, you have to get the ball up very quickly. This is done by opening the stance more and opening the face of the club more. The more the face is open, the more force will be directed upward on the ball, and the less force forward. Unless the ball is embedded or in a bad lie, it will come up quickly enough to clear the face of the bunker.

These are the shots in golf short game, then—the short pitch, the chip, the putt, the green-side trap—that take up the slack when the long game falters. These are the ones that help us atone for mistakes, that give us a second chance when the long iron strays or the full pitch doesn't quite have the legs. They get us the pars when the bogeys stare us in the face. And the putts, when our long game is on the beam, get us the birdies.

So seize every chance you can to practice the golf short game. It's the easy department of golf to work at, and it pays tre­mendous dividends.

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